Hi there!
Today’s topic is forgiveness. More specifically, an interesting way I realized it can happen. I will not be concerned with the definition of forgiveness here. However you define it, this post should apply.
I would think that forgiveness happens if you explicitly address an issue. That is what I did for most of my life. I had an issue with someone. Some time later, I would go and meditate on that and forgive that person (I believe this process is known as cord-cutting). After this session, I would genuinely feel neutral towards the issue. The resentment or anger would be gone. However, I realized this week that I forgave someone that I had a big issue with without really doing anything about it. I tried the method I just mentioned many times before and it did not work. I could not forgive. I still felt the resentment and anger to some level. Then, I stopped thinking about it and accepted that I would carry the resentment with me (which is unusual for me, because I tend to forgive bad incidents with people so that I don;’t have to carry the weight of anger and resentment). But the issue came up in a discussion this week and I noticed I didn’t feel anything bad anymore. I was surprised. How and when did this happen? I was even cherishing the good times I had with this person, whereas before the bad times made me unable to do that.
I thought about this a bit this week. I still don’t know how this happened. An idea is that maybe I really focused on my own life and came to a place where I am generally satisfied with who I am and where I am. Maybe that helped me drop the unwanted because what is the point of it? Maybe I kept the resentment for that long because one part of me wanted to get approval in some way (approval of suffering? need to be seen or noticed?) and now I no longer need any approval, so the resentment just dropped. However it happened, though, I am very happy that it did. I feel much lighter.
Have you experienced something like this before? If so, did you figure out why and how this happens? Let’s discuss uninitiated forgiveness today.